Changing your work-life to welcome more freedom and fulfillment is a process and a journey. Here, every month, we will share stories of women who are doing it. Real stories, real transformation. This is a virtual treasure chest — full of the challenges, struggles, lessons and insights of others — which you can use to enrich your own path.

This month’s featured “woman on purpose” is Meike Nittel, a former goldsmith apprentice. She’s currently working to co-found Conscious Capitalism’s German Speaking Chapter with colleagues from Austria, Switzerland and Germany. She’s also a life coach at The Business Muse.                           .

Describe the big shift you’ve made in your work-life. What led you to that change?

After working in the same industry for eight years, I knew in my heart I wanted more. I could feel my body needed a different work atmosphere. And in too many of the business-conferences I had organized, the big conclusion why project deadlines and budgets blew up was the ‘Human Being’ factor that to me was seeing the world in an upside-down perspective – my mind still cannot be at peace with that.

I like to see us humans having a great chance to live life consciously, to understand we each have amazing potential. To me, it is a wonderful assignment to get to know all my talents, develop them in order to serve other people, this beautiful planet and beyond, with what we can do best and more and more with great ease and pleasure.

So I quit my 8 – 5 job not knowing what would be my playground to doing what I love, to be serving others and to make a living from it. I leaped, one great shift – and more to come.

What were you most fearful of in making that change?

The fear was actually not about making the change, but about not-making the change: I sensed that I would get seriously ill if I stayed (I chose to not wait until burn-out). Guiding me, I have to follow a deep intuition to go that way of self-direction. Often enough, people around me still offer their fears of such a step. At some point, I stopped listening.

How is your experience of life different now?

I could not plan what change would come. I trusted that the right changes will show up. The big shift (see above) set free amazing experiences and important insights – mind shifts – by following my curiosity step by step.

By nature, I am a generalist. I cannot focus and specialize in one topic only. I allowed myself to adventure my many talents:

I trained in being a psychosomatic consultant, helping people to read their symptoms and issues and how that supports their development. I trained for meditations with conscious breath work, to offer people a space to recharge their inner batteries of life energy. I fine-tuned my people reading skills. I now organize several networks in order to invite people to do themselves and others good and also to share these wonderful stories. I found great project partners to now train executives and teams to lead and collaborate with appreciation. And together, we train the basic steps of entrepreneurial project management, to be able to start from scratch and not depending on finding investors, yet taking action. I love to encourage to go for high energy and to unfold one’s potential. There are many fold ways out there.

Business-wise you call that “Entrepreneurship”*, do what you do best and with ease and inspiration and get project-partners for the aspects they do much better and from their hearts. (*Another insight I luckily had.)

So the big shift in working experience has been from “working hard for the money” to working, better say playing from my heart and seeing money moving – for me and my network.

What’s your biggest concern in this moment?

My biggest concern…

I choose to see how can I create huge excitement with a new project, then – as I have now often experienced – doors and new opportunities open. So in April, I will be flying to Philadelphia to meet hundreds of conscious business people at the Conscious Capitalism Spring Conference 2017 – an amazing network and approach to show what forward-looking and integral business and new work can be based on.

What are you most excited about going forward?

My great fun is and will be, to travel and speak as Business Muse in front of many audiences, to animate and unleash energy to innovate, cooperate and develop and to exhale at leisure. I love to inspire and be living the new “work” paradigm.

My goal with Conscious Capitalism is to co-found the German Speaking Chapter with colleagues from Austria, Switzerland and Germany, to set up get-togethers, conferences where open-minded and open-hearted business people meet and support each other on creating this holistic work- and business environment, based on purpose, stakeholder-orientation and conscious leadership and culture. 

With my International Conscious Breath Work-Network, we proclaimed 2017 as the Year of Connected Breath. We are currently creating huge excitement and inviting to big events and go for mainstream fame for this powerful instrument: our breath.

If you could travel back in time, what’s one piece of advice that your current self wishes that you could tell your former self?

1989 was more of a wall flower.

If I could travel back in time I would tell my 21-year old self: “Be bold, hop on the train and travel to Berlin”, where the Wall just had come down “and go and dance on the wall!”. With that event, an amazing creative power was unleashed, which still undulates through the city. And I myself finally made it into the city in 1999.

Whoever of the Women on Purpose ladies travels to Berlin, please do connect, let’s meet.

About Meike

Meike is currently working to co-found Conscious Capitalism’s German Speaking Chapter with colleagues from Austria, Switzerland and Germany. She’s also a life coach at The Business Muse. You cann know more about her by following her social media accounts: LinkedIn, Facebook, Blog, and other social media networks, MeetUp and Verbundener